Normally I’m not a “lesser of two evils” type, but nuclear is such an immensely lesser evil compared to coal and oil that it’s insane people are still against it.
Especially when you start counting the number of people that have died either directly or indirectly from coal, oil and every fossil fuel.
If your extrapolate the data into the next hundred years … fossil fuels will have responsible for the deaths of billions.
Compared to nuclear energy … fossil fuels is killing us slowly and will kill us all if we don’t stop using them.
Coal plants gives more radiation through radioactive mercury as a left over from processign
I think you’re misreading the room. People are against nuclear because they’re for renewables, not because they’re for fossil fuels.
I spoke with a far left friend of mine about this. His position essentially boiled down to the risk of a massive nuclear disaster outweighed the benefits. I said what about the known disastrous consequences of coal and oil? Didn’t really have a response to that. It doesn’t make sense to me. I’ll roll those dice and take the .00001% chance risk or whatever.
I’ve heard some people worry that it can be used for weapons. idk.
Ironic argument for someone in a country where you can buy actual assault weapons over the counter, isn’t it?
No new assault weapons have been manufactured for sale to civilians since the 80’s.
I researched and it turns out no fully automatic weapons have been available for a few decades now. Tightly controlled. Semi automatic is just as lethal though. Also apparently the las vegas shooter in 2018 use bump stocks on his semi automatics which makes it pseudo automatic if you’ll pardon the pun. Notably, the DOJ announced this bump stock reg in 2018, under the Trump administration. Interesting, but not surprising, that the insane right didn’t lose their shit about “muh gunz” when it happened under Trump’s reign.
Nah the reason people didn’t make much noise about bump stocks is because they’re terrible. They are purely something you might do for entertainment rather than any serious attempt to shoot; they really hurt accuracy and comfort.
Nuclear is fantastic and would have been even more fantastic 30 years ago. But it’s 2023 and renewables are getting better every day. There’s just no real reason to not invest primarily in green energy sources, especially when the track record on nuclear waste management is abysmal. People will say “oh but the resources, oh but the storage, oh but the blah blah blah”. We act like these things can’t be done, but they are being done all over the place. While the US argues about whether solar is viable, China has almost produced more solar panels in a year than the US has ever produced. And they are planning to try and deliver to other countries with less productive capacity as well.
I love the nuclear waste storage argument. Wouldn’t it be grand if we could just stick it in the atmosphere like we do with coal and oil? Smh…
Thing is bad, therefore other things that’s not as bad is good. Yo your brain is fucking melted lmao
8 day old account, second post is to be an asshole to me for no reason. Classy. You’re either a bot or another shitty lemming. You’ll fit right in here with all the other insufferable shitheads in this forum.
Yeah, nuclear is to fossil fuels as planes are to cars, safety wise. Sure it’s a huge deal when an accident occurs, but that’s because accidents are drastically more rare.
I am not sure when the narrative around nuclear power became nuclear energy vs renewables when it should be nuclear and renewables vs fossil fuels.
We need both nuclear and renewable energy where we try to use and develop renewables as much as possible while using nuclear energy to plug the gaps in the renewable energy supply
Easy, by paying people to spread misinformation.
That’s the “how”. The other commenter was unsure about “when”.
This is the product of a couple of cultural movements in previous generations.
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People who conflated their Cold War-era opposition to nuclear weapons with opposition to nuclear energy. The Venn diagram with early environmental movements has considerable overlap.
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A more general and mostly-irrational fear of nuclear energy mostly stoked in the U.S. by Three Mile Island, which is a case study in good nuclear accident management with piss-poor public relations. (See: the first few seasons of the Simpsons many gags about the dangers of the power plant.)
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The current environmental movement’s general unwillingness to acknowledge nuclear energy as a very advantageous tool in the push to eliminate fossil fuels. Why? Over-optimism about where renewables are now and continued influence of the Boomers from #1 who taught all of their university classes.
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Over-reaction to Fukushima, particularly in the EU (other than France). And then doubling down until Ukraine forced their hands when Russian gas became an embarrassment.
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A decade ago I’d agree with you. But given the amount of time needed to get a nuclear power plant online, if we tried to use nuclear to replace fossil fuels, it’ll probably be too late. Add to that the fact that the cost of wind and solar has dropped significantly and the fact we’d be trading dependency on resources from a group of unstable countries to a dependency on resources from another group of unstable countries, it just seems like nuclear just isn’t a very good option any more.
Of course there could be a tech change (like fusion) which alters this, but the days of fission are past. Keep the plants that are currently operational going, and if there’s construction near completion, then sure. But I feel like fission has become a bad option for new developments. Takes too long and there’s better solutions available that don’t depend on resources from other countries.
Fusion is still decades away from being commercially viable, so while continued funding for RnD for it should be important, it still has a long way to go before we can even start making plans for power plants operating on it.
As for Nuclear having long set up time… that’s not a reason to not use it. That’s a reason to hammer out plans and start finding ideal sites for it to service high density and high demand areas as soon as possible. The other half of this coin is that activists and legislatures need to take a serious look at Nuclear Regulations and cut the things that are simply not needed. Nuclear continues to be a viable option in spite of the severe restrictions placed upon it, restrictions that no other form of energy production could even be viable much less profitable. If we equalized these limitations and restrictions, you can pretty much guarantee that Nuclear would suddenly become #1 choice and still maintain the highest safety rating per watt produced.
Solar, Wind and Nuclear all complement each other very well, with the downsides of each generation being easily offset by the other two forms of power generation. Wind and Solar take a lot of space to make farms that produce enough power to feed a large city, where as a nuclear plant can produce the same amount of power with considerably less space. And the two can be interwoven together, with most nuclear plants already having ‘no go’ areas or restricted zones around them that could easily be filled in with Solar and Wind.
Solar will give you a set amount of power each day the shines, varying throughout the year but works as a good baseline. Initiatives could be pushed to add rooftop solar to most homes, businesses and other buildings or infrastructure that people don’t need to walk across or stand upon, increasing the base line here in a relatively cheap and low cost way, though of course these panels do need to be cleaned regularly so just plastering them to the sides of skyscrapers isn’t quite as viable as people like to think it would be.
Nuclear is a very efficient form of power generation with variable output. While it is true that Nuclear plants need some time to vary their output, this isn’t nearly as big of deal as people make it out to be given the rate of power generation can be changed in a matter of minutes, not hours, and using historical data of power usage year over year and monitoring current conditions, a properly built and managed nuclear plant can easily adjust on a schedule to raise and lower it’s output ahead of rising and falling demands throughout the day. And using modern reactor designs, these advantages become more pronounced with faster reaction times in generation and more thorough use of fuel leaving considerably less waste.
And Wind power acts as a great back up and buffer for all other forms of power generation, in rural areas wind power can easily provide 100% of the power needs and more to rural and suburban communities, and when combined with other forms of power wind can easily and rapidly bring turbines online or shut them off to follow the demand of the power grid and bridge the gap during any anomalous spikes and valleys in usage. Wind turbines do take a lot of space per gigawatthour produced, but in rural areas with farming or livestock where lots of land isn’t really being used and developed for other reasons, wind turbines make sense, and with good a good power grid that can transmit power over hundreds of miles, can incorporate large areas of empty land into high density area in the same region to meet power needs with minimal pollution and carbon footprint.
Of course each power generation has it’s problems, Solar only works when the sun shines obviously, requiring large scale power storage which isn’t exactly feasible with the technology we have today. Wind turbines seem great on the surface, but their blades are made of carbon fibre in most instances, and have 7 year life spans at most, with no current programs or policies in place to break down these turbine blades that will not decay naturally, meaning roughly every seven years landfills and dumps get thousands more semi-trailer sized blades dumped into them with no long term plan on how to recycle or reuse them. And Nuclear power has the waste issue, and more importantly a PR issue. With older 60s and 70s designs, these reactors did generate notable amounts of waste, but this is less a problem with more modern reactors that can even run previously ‘depleted’ waste fuel through them to generate power while also reducing the amount of radioactive material left over. And of course the longer setup times, which addressed above is not actually something they should need, given the absurdly high standards placed upon Nuclear by skeptics and detractors decades ago mean many other power plants, factories and even government buildings would immediately be disqualified and turned into exclusion zones due the natural radioactivity of the building materials such as granite which we know to be harmless to humans.
Nuclear plus renewables is the path we need. Add in power storage technologies to smooth out fluctuations and we’re fully covered.
It’s going to take decades to decarbonize, the current Paris accord 2030 goal will not be met at all. Biden has set a target date for the US for 2050 to achieve net zero. That’s 37 years away.
Currently we’re going in the opposite direction:
“The Production Gap 2021 report states that world governments still plan to produce 110% more fossil fuels in 2030 (including 240% more coal, 57% more oil and 71% more gas) than the 1.5 degree limit.[118]”
People are talking about solving climate change as a sprint, but really it’s a marathon. In fact, we don’t even have the technology to fully decarbonize all sectors. It’s going to take an “all hands on deck” approach and yes, will cost trillions of $$$ to achieve.
I’m pretty doubtful that we will achieve net zero energy and zero carbon before the end of the century. The first 50% of emissions reductions will be the easiest of the low hanging fruit; each successive % reduction will be that much harder and more expensive to achieve.
Tying back to your comment, each nuke plant permanently displaces millions of tons of CO2 emissions per year.
the fact we’d be trading dependency on resources from a group of unstable countries to a dependency on resources from another group of unstable countries
I’m not sure calling Canada (up until 2019 the largest exporter and miner of uranium) an unstable country. Unless you want to talk about our looming housing crash.
He is talking about Kazakhstan, which produces ~46% of the supply (compared to Canada’s ~15% of which they export even less). Other top producers includes Namibia and Uzbekistan, not terribly stable countries.
And on top of that, the Stans have a big neighbour that would be willing to conquer them to secure these resources, to strengthen its geopolitical position.
Also not sure what your source is for Canada being the largest exporter, as they have exported less than Kazakhstan since at least 2013 (according to what I can find, but please prove me wrong if that isn’t the case). They definitely weren’t the largest miner of it since 2009 I believe.
Canada also produces oil. So why does what fuckheads in places like Russia and Saudi Arabia affect oil prices in Canada?
Seems like in a capitalist world, markets are global and instability anywhere in the world affects the prices of resources that are traded globally. Being dependent on those resources means wars need to be fought to secure those resources to keep the prices stable.
Nuclear energy can not be used to “plug gaps”. The power that it produces can not be varied very quickly. The goal should be to only have renewable in the end.
Solar panels aren’t truly renewable since they degrade over time and need to be replaced after around 20-30 years. Yes they can be recycled, but so can (and is) nuclear waste.
Everything has a cost and you can’t escape entropy.
This is true; nothing is sustainable at geological time scales. Human technological civilization even less so. Just look at how badly North Africa, the Middle East and China’s environment has been degraded through thousands of years of organic (!) farming. The Middle East used to have enormous cypress forests, and North Africa was full of wetlands where the Qattara Depression now resides.
Minimum warranty for good solar panels at 90% is 30 years , they will last 60 (no one knows exactly) albeit not as efficient.
I just had some installed.
Guaranteed 80% efficiency for 20 years.I heavily doubt they will last 60 years.Had energy storage installed as well. Only guaranteed 90% (~4500 cycles) for 10 years.
EDIT: double checked the data sheet. They are actually 86% for 25 years with a rated 0.5% per year degradation rate.
Quite sure mine had 30 years at 90 % . But it was the really good mono ones. Storage is a completely different story. But hey even if they are down to 25% I would keep them and just add new ones.
0.5 would mean 30 for 60 years also…
Let’s not forget about nuclear fusion, which will be way more efficient and have less waste if we can figure it out!!!😉
What I meant by gaps was that nuclear can be used in areas where solar or wind is not feasible yet or in areas where solar or wind cannot fulfill the energy demands.
Also we have very good control over nuclear power generation. There are a variety of methods using which we can control the reaction rate of the fission process
Uhhhhh
Don’t get scared off by the N Word
Nuclear isn’t the monster it’s made out to be by oil and coal propagands.
I never saw nuclear as a bad idea.
It always perplexes me how it’s next to impossible to discuss nuclear energy without it turning into a discussion about politics.
Crazy how effective the ruling class has been at getting the masses to squabble over dumb shit.
The oil and coal lobby is pushing nuclear in markets it’s losing - both to slow the transition to renewables with endless debate, and because nuclear takes so damn long to build.
So does hydro, solar and wind energy generation.
Hydro is the better option but requires changes to water supply, solar requires massive fields of empty land, wind generation is loud and disturbs local wildlife while at the same time has the largest fail rate.
Nuclear is the best option. It’s the cheapest when considering the energy output, most environmentally friendly, and takes up the least amount of space.
The largest radioactive disaster was misuse of medical equipment.
Average time to build a nuclear plant is 88 months. The high end for solar is 24 months - it’s generally a fraction of that. The cost per kwh for solar is also a quarter of the cost of nuclear at worst - and that’s factoring the cost of batteries.
Hydro is about the most situational power source their is - making the blanket statement that it’s the better option a suspicious one.
Chernobyl would have turned a good portion of Europe into a radioactive wasteland if people hadn’t resigned themselves to one of the most unpleasant deaths imaginable. 37 years later, it’s still uninhabitable, with no change to that in sight.
Fukushima, which is still being actively cleaned up over a decade later, had the potential to do functionally destroy to Tokyo, displacing over 30 million people while doing untold economic damage.
Quicker to build, cheaper power, less dangerous, less environmental damage, no nuclear waste to manage, no supply chain issues with nuclear material. Last I checked, the US isn’t running out of space, so remind me - why would we want nuclear?
Chernobyl disaster was a one off caused by old tech and user error and more people have died from wind turbine accidents than they have due to nuclear reactor accidents.
The cost per kWh for solar is 7 times higher than that of modern nuclear power plants.
You failed to address Fukushima - and wind turbines don’t have the potential to render a continent uninhabitable.
The cost per kWh for solar is 7 times higher than that of modern nuclear power plants.
Bullshit - solar costs a fraction of nuclear. this isn’t a remotely controversial statement.
Roof of chernobyl was literally made out of wood
Nuclear is the best option. It’s the cheapest when considering the energy output, most environmentally friendly, and takes up the least amount of space.
It’s the most environmentally friendly, if you don’t consider that it is not renewable and that there are no waste management solutions for the highly radioactive waste.
Nuclear power is exactly as renewable as solar power; and ‘highly’ radioactive waste is a fraction of a fraction of the waste generated, with most waste being less harmful than living within 50 miles of a coal mine, or 100 miles of a coal power plant. It’s also entirely defeated by a relatively small amount of one of the most common metals on Earth. Additionally, if we were to power the entire world with just nuclear power, the amount of unusable waste generated per year globally would be smaller than a compact sedan, requiring a little less than a box-truck sized container to store it safely anywhere on the planet. It would take several tens of billions of years to accumulate to a problematic size for safe storage.
So we build more Nuclear Power Plants, because the highly toxic waste is not “enough” to care? Where are keeping it then?
Literally in any of the hundreds of current underground sites? It’s also not highly toxic, it’s radioactive. There’s a pretty huge difference. Nuclear waste doesn’t leech into the water cycle like the run off of broken solar panels or turbine arms.
I am in the EU. There is literally no storage for highly radioactive waste. There has been talk for years that one will be available, but so far… nothing.
Nuclear waste doesn’t leech into the water cycle
That’s not true. Nuclear waste can also contaminate ground water, if stored incorrectly. And as we discussed: we have no storage solution for the highly radioactive waste and thus can’t store it correctly.
It not being renewable doesn’t really matter when talking about its CO2 emissions. And the neat thing is, radioactive waste decays on its own so the “waste management” needed is to bury it somewhere and leave it there. It ain’t that complicated.
It’s a bit more complicated. Where are you gonna bury it? It has to be somewhere, where normally nobody is. Also you have to keep the waste containers safe (and in one piece) for a very, very long time. How are you gonna mark it that people thousands of years in the future still know that it is dangerous?
There is a giant hole in a mountain specifically for the purpose of waste disposal.
Anti-nuclear people in here arguing about disasters that killed a few k people in 50 years. Also deeply worried about nuclear waste that won’t have an impact on humans for thousands of years, but ignoring climate change is having an impact and might end our way of life as we know it before 2100.
They’re bike-shedding and blocking a major stepping stone to a coal, petrol and gas free future for the sake of idealism.
The biggest enemy of the left is the left
For the love of everything, at least let’s stop decommissioning serviceable nuclear plants.
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safety and efficiency will be improved by investment in nuclear. storage needs are dramatically reduced because we now have reactors that can run off of the waste of other reactors, “recycling” it and massively improving efficiency while reducing waste. yes, there are concerns with nuclear, but opposing nuclear is a losing battle. we need nuclear, and yes, the tech needs to develop further, but we won’t get that without investing in it today.
This. It amazes me how many people are anti nuclear but don’t understand what it is, how it’s waste can be recycled and how it is less harmful to the environment than wind and solar. Yes you read that correctly.
It’s less surprising when you realize the founder of greenpeace was drummed out of the org over this same issue.
Do you have a source on that? I googled the founders of greenpeace, but I didn’t find any reference to your claim.
not really my jam, but even wikipedia mentions division over golden rice which is also pretty dumb.
here’s one from '08 politico.
a lot of things like this gets memory holed as to not be so obvious about having luxury beliefs where they don’t mind how many people starve as long as it pushes their particular facet of a nuanced agenda imho.
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Because this is not currently deployed at scale. We are way past “waiting for the next great technology”.
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Conventional nuclear is deployed at scale, especially in the USA, China, and France.
Would it be deployable to most major city areas that have easy access to water?
You forgot the /s
Good stance, though part of the problem is that we hopped off nuclear, but not quite.
So we recognized risks of the nuclear plants and we started doing fixes, but most critically, we largely stopped making reactors. So instead of migrating to newer, fundamentally safer designs, we keep duct taping the existing ones.
We already have much better technology understanding, but because new nuclear is scary, and somehow old nuclear got grandfathered in, we are generally living with 70s limitations. Fukushima failed in a way a more modern design would probably have done in a ‘failsafe’ way. Same for waste, we have knowledge on how to have reactions that end with much less problematic material (though still not great, at least with a more manageable half life).
So we should make sure we address the concerns, but have to balance that against letting perfect be the enemy of the good. So far we’ve been so reluctant about safety of new reactors, we ironically are stuck with roughly 70s level safety.
Norway (iirc, or some country near it.) Has been making a large containment facility in a deep mountain cave that would be able to store a large amount of the waste. The waste is actually pretty much a non issue at this point. I would much rather we start making more reactors now while we still have a chance, than be paralyzed with fear that the nuclear waste is gonna be some major crisis. It won’t be, but the amount of pollution from NOT having the reactors will be.
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High level waste is only about 5% of the total waste produced and the rest is low to moderately radioactive. The low stuff is safe within a week and the moderate waste is safe within a few months. Almost all of it can be disposed of normally after that like any other trash.
If you took all of the high level waste like actual fuel rods that has ever been produfed in the US since 1945 and put it all in one spot it would be about the size of an American football field.
Literally fling them into the sun or something. Waste is a non-issue
I agree that waste is an overblown issue but launching it into space is about the worst thing we could do. With the rate of critical failures of rocket launches, we are practically guaranteed to have exploding rockets spewing nuclear waste into the atmosphere. There are plenty of solutions to nuclear waste here on earth that are mainly held up by fear mongering and nimbyism
Fling them dont put them on a ballistic missile. Literally get a strong rubber band and a flock of sophomores, put the shit on the band, have the boys pull on it and bada bing bada boom shit flies past voyager 1 in no time and the lads will regrow every cell on them anyway by next friday
It’s maddening that you are getting downvotes. Are they from ignorance or bad actors? Because who would downvote a true statement about SAFETY, FFS?
Because the environmental damage caused by the largest nuclear disasters in history is still nothing like the damage from fossil fuels.
Not just that but the fossil fuel industry’s history is full of much worse disasters than any nuclear plant.
If you were to truly compare them based just off safety it’s no contest. Nuclear power is cleaner and safer
But there was no actual comparison. The post was pointing out how the safety was not good enough, not that it was less safe than fossil fuels. Not everyone is comfortable with a nuclear power plant in their back yard. So I guess you’re perfectly fine with the current level of nuclear power regulation and safety? Good. The rest of the public is not for the reasons stated.
The rest of the public has been manipulated by oil barons who constantly push these fear mongering talking points.
It is safer in every way.
You act like Homer Simpson is real and that’s how nuclear power plants operate. In the modern age unless it’s just gross incompetence it’s been safer for decades.
Oh and if you want those safety regulations to ever get better you have to keep putting money into them. You’re not gonna get progress by ignoring them.
In fact that’s the only reason nuclear power isn’t more prevalent because the average citizen is so blinded by oil propaganda they refuse anything to do with it.
I’ll type it for the third time in this thread: But there was no actual comparison.
And there are 2 more important reasons to table new nuclear plant development.
What’s to compare? On a per kWh basis, nuclear is cleaner and safer. On a per accident basis nuclear is cleaner and safer. On a waste product basis nuclear is cleaner and safer.
Coal plants emit radioactive material in the smoke they kick out. They literally spit continuous radioactive material into the air. Nuclear plants simply do not.
In fact, putting aside Chernobyl (there are so many reasons including it skews the numbers against nuclear unfairly) there have been more deaths related to wind turbines than nuclear plants.
Edit: and even with all the deaths from Chernobyl, it’s still safer on a per kWh basis. :End-Edit
The reason Chernobyl is unfair is for a few reasons. Most of them being abhorrent policies that were enacted by the Soviet Union.
Operators of the plant were poorly trained. Design flaws that could impact safe operation were classified and not shared with the operators. Testing processes were a joke by all standards, even for the time. And the RBMK reactors were simply flawed in their design, and it was known about from the beginning because it was done to be cheap.
Compare that with a CANDU reactor which has both active and passive safety mechanisms that make it nearly impossible to meltdown. The closest we’ve ever had to an accident was a false alarm about contaminated water leaking that was sent out from the Darlington, Ontario plant a number of years ago.
And the issue with nuclear waste isn’t as huge as everyone makes it out to be. The vast majority of the spent fuel drops down to background levels in a few decades. And the really radioactive stuff, which is about 2% of the total fuel, is radiative for thousands of years. But the fun fact about that is it can be reprocessed into new fuel and used again in a reactor like the CANDU reactors.
The only reason that fuel isn’t being recycled today is because it’s still economically cheaper to just use new fuel and store the used stuff on site.
lol. I’ve said now 4 times this is not about nuclear vs fossil fuels. It’s hilarious the perseveration on this.
Nuclear is dead. Accept it and move on to fixing the problems with renewables. There are 2 fantastic reasons to avoid nuclear.
2 million people die every year from coal emissions. Nuclear weapons haven’t even killed that many.
“But there was no actual comparison.” I’m typing it again because it seems you missed that part.
What fucking comparison are you looking for?
None. Please go back and read the thread. It wasn’t about an actual comparison, even though you and others seen to perseverate on the “fucking” comparison.
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There’s also the issue with mining and refining uranium that emit a huge amount of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
Nowhere as close to fossil fuels or even the materials for EV batteries.
Do you have any numbers on this?
Lithium mined 2022: 130,000 metric tons
Uranium mined 2022: 48,888 metric tons
Of course EV batteries consist of only ~5% lithium so…
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We really do need a better option to dumping it into the oceans.
If you’re talking about tritium from Fukushima, no, we don’t.
I live less than 2 miles from the last remaining coal power station in England.
I would much rather have nuclear instead of a chimney chucking god knows what into the air (and subsequently into me) for my entire life.
Fun fact, coal plants produce more radiation into their environment than nuclear plants
Modern reactor designs are so damn safe it’s insane
That wasn’t fun at all.
If they are so damn safe why i can’t build one in my backyard?
Because the radioactive bits need to be handled by trained and trusted personnel because if those bits fall into the wrong hands they can be used for some horrible shit
so are you saying that it is not safe?
Everything can be unsafe if in the wrong hands
There are different degrees of safety associated with all things and we as a society have deemed nuclear power plants and their fuel as something that should only be in the hands of those trained and trusted in how to use it
Have you ever been in a coal fired plant? Or even easier, been around a coal furnace for home heating? What about industrial environments?
That shit isn’t safe.
There are different levels of safety, personal reactors are on the other side of a cultural shift.
If I install solar panels and the inverters incorrectly I could potentially harm or kill myself and others. Therefore solar isn’t safe.
But then why you can build these in your garden and not nuclear?
with the risk of feeding the troll, maybe this will sway some fence sitters from adopting this argument
because we allow people to shave (some even do it with straight razors, too - dangerous shite) themselves and others with little to no oversight but we don’t let them perform surgery without proper training that takes a decade or so to master. should that make surgery illegal?
also, if you want to talk safety for home implements just look at the number of people that die due to carbon monoxide poisoning (or sometimes explosions) because of improperly set up heating at home. did you know it’s illegal to operate on your own gas pipes without proper permits? yup, you need to be qualified for that so you don’t rig your house into an IED
or if you want to have some fun, play around with some improperly discharged fridge capacitors, and see what that gets you. yet, you still have a fridge, I’d wager. by your logic, if it’s allowed in a home, it’s safe, right?
Because crayon eaters like you would open them up.
Such a dumb question.
Building a nuclear power plant requires the collaboration of physicists, nuclear + electrical + civil engineers, etc…
Solar requires a certified electrician.
We know how to build nuclear safely, it just requires a lot more effort and oversight, therefore is not something you can build at home.
If planes are safer than cars, why can’t I fly a Boeing 797-9 Dreamliner?
Chew on that for a while.
If planes are safer than cars, why can’t I fly a Boeing 797-9 Dreamliner?
Because perhaps they are not
I lived less than 2 miles from a coal power station (until they pulled it down). By the owners own admission, when it was running, it released about 60kg of radioactive material a year from stuff that was in the coal.
I would rather have a gun pointed at me than a bazooka, that doesn’t mean i should have a weapon pointed at me.
We can solve a problem without generating another one. There are better alternatives to nuclear.
Cause once again no one can see the potential advancements nuclear technology can have if it had proper investment. Everyone see’s Chernobyl and Fukushima and then they switch off.
Yes Renewables are better than nuclear for the moment but to demonize and not even discuss it is just burying your head in the sand
To be fair, I also see Hanford (Washington state). I see that we can’t commit to 50 years of maintenance, let alone hundreds of years. I see saddling generations with cost and care so we can have electricity today. I’d feel better about nuclear if we paid for the full cost upfront.
A critical point is that basically all the nuclear power plants ever built are either bomb factories, or modified bomb factories. A lot of the nasty waste is a by-product of this side of things.
A lot of the newer designs are done to not produce significant medium or long term waste. They are also a lot more fail-safe, rather than the “fail-deadly” with layers of protection.
It’s also worth noting that nuclear regulations are extremely strict. If regulated in the same way, most coal power stations would be in breach of the regs. There is more radioactive material in coal dust than a nuclear power plant is allowed to emit. Unfortunately the press loves being alarmist over any nuclear release. Readers don’t have the context for what is safe Vs dangerous.
My hang up is actually on how long the site and materials would need to be cared for to be safe. Unless the technology has shortened that aspect substantially, I have reservations. I really worry about leaving future generations with commitments they had no say in and may have limited benefit from.
I fully agree with you. The newer plant designs use different types of nuclear fission. They don’t produce the really nasty waste. In fact, some designs can effectively eat it as fuel. There is still some waste, but it’s generally the low grade stuff e.g. gloves with slightly toxic materials on them. You want to keep them away from the water table, but you likely wouldn’t be able to tell, without specialist equipment.
Thorium reactors are a good example.
I find it fascinating how few people remember the time when Greenpeace was literally selling Russian gas.
From the Wikipedia Page
In “Climate and Energy”
Green Planet Energy
In 1999 Greenpeace Germany (NGO) founded Greenpeace Energy, a renewable electricity cooperative that supplied customers with fossil gas starting from 2011. After a 2021 media outcry about an entity associated with Greenpeace selling fossil fuel which has been described as greenwashing,[89] the cooperative changed its name to Green Planet Energy.[90] The Greenpeace Germany NGO retains one share in the cooperative, which has been criticized for “greenwashing” Russian gas.[89]
Link to article 89 Link to article 90
I am Kyoyeou, just a curious person. Not Bip Boop
Could you expand on that please? (I sound a bit snarky but don’t mean to!)
I’ve made a comment to the parent one with a link to the wiki article!
@Kyoyeou@slrpnk.net seems to have given all the background info :)
I made it in response to this comment but wanted it to be a bit less hidden!
Reminds me of PETA throwing lobsters in fresh water.
If the Great Filter theory is correct, climate change will most likely be our Great Filter.
Our species is simply not equipped with the ability to deal with the problems it created. Many people can, but they’re not powerful to do anything, and there’s too many uneducated people for the masses to rise up about this problem.
We think so short term, it’s impossible for some people to think about the future and accept that we’ll need to change the way we live now so that we can keep living then. They’re hung up on Chernobyl because it was a big bang that killed lots of people at once and it was televised everywhere that has a society and TVs, but they are unable to see that in the long term coal and gas have killed and are still killing way more people than nuclear accidents, because it’s a process that’s continuous and kills people in indirect ways instead of a big blast.
Coal has the same yearly death toll and chernobyl’s total death toll. 80,000.
This is the same problem/argument you have with the argument/perception of planes being unsafe.
In 2022 almost 43000 people died in “motor vehicle traffic crashes”. And yet many believe that Planes are much more dangerous to use than cars because hundreds of people die all at once in a Plane crash.
A Plane crash is automatically a sensation, something that doesn’t happen every day but a car accident happens every day but this isn’t reported as much because it is already a daily routine.
The same goes with the “Coal kills more than nuclear” argument which is even less likely to be grasped by the normal population.
I mean just look at the climate change denier who say “but it is snowing so climate change isn’t real” while at the same time complaining that each summer is so incredibly hot.
All of those things are so incredibly complex that the vast majority can’t understand and outright deny them because they read/heard somewhere that they actually can understand, that it is a hoax. I mean, I wouldn’t count myself to the people that understand climate change but I can understand that it will have a drastic impact on our lives if this goes on.
Apple and oranges. It’s unhealthy and unsafe to live near Chernobyl. It took nearly a decade for people to start moving back to Fukushima Prefecture after decontamination and subsides to lure people back.
The actual cost of a Nuclear disaster is incredibly costly.
It still requires mining, processing and it still produces waste, waste which has to sit at the site of the nuclear reactor or be transported across country to some other temporary site. To my knowledge there is still no permanent disposal site for nuclear waste in the United States.
It’s unhealthy and unsafe to live near Chernobyl.
I’m with you most of the way, but it’s also extremely unhealthy to live near a coal power plant. That’s why they keep building them in or next to neighborhoods where the residents are too poor to be able to effectively sue them for all the cancer and other nasty deaths.
I agree that we need to get away from coal and natural gas. I don’t think Nuclear is the answer though. You’re trading one set of major health and financial problems for another.
Agreed. At CURRENT technology levels, renewable energy is the most cost-effective, creates more and better jobs, can cover 100%+ of the world’s energy needs and is much more reliable and flexible than fossil fuel or nuclear to boot. All that on top of being the only kind that never runs out. Only thing missing is the political will to break with the fossil barons and their cousins the radioactive lordlings to make the transition.
I think it’s worse than that. We humans are inherently selfish and self-preserving.
People who live far away from any coal mines do not feel threatened by coal, because it will not impact them directly (besides fu**ing up the planet, of course, but that’s another issue humans have with big pictures and long term effect correlation to present small scale actions).
But most people can’t tell where a nuclear plant can be built, so it could be close enough to expose them to a risk of disaster?
Therefore: “Nuclear is more dangerous than coal (for my personal case)”
Holding up coal as a strawman argument in support of Nuclear power is a fallacy. Both are massively toxic in different ways. One does not legitimize the other.
I still don’t think it will be our great filter. It will be a filter. But not the end all/be all.
Climate change isn’t really an existential threat. To be a filter it has to kill all humans and even the bleakest models don’t predict that.
Also for it to be a Great Filter it has to be something that ALL civilizations do to kill themselves. Seems unlikely that all civs wou ld even have analogs to gossil fuels in quantities sufficient to do this kind of damage. And the idea that zero of them actually course-correct when they notice it seems equally implausible
This thread: nuclear is far better than fossil fuels
Everyone else: nuclear is not as good as renewables
This thread: nuclear is far better than fossil fuels
Crickets
Yeah nah, no one is saying that. What people are saying is that neither is fundamentally better than the other, and usage should depend on geographic conditions, sociopolitical considerations, materials and experience. Moreover, while both are not receiving sufficient investment and development, Nuclear in particular receives unwarranted opposition and remains unable to advance due to a lack of funding and support
We’ll have to disagree. Renewables can be scaled faster and cheaper and also secure the grid through decentralization.
I wouldn’t even agree with the middle.
It’s me, I’m the nuclear lobby.
Nuclear is the achievable & practical interim solution to power an industrial society until renewables become practical / scale up to meet demand. We can build reactors in the short term, they uncouple the economy from bad faith actors like russia & opec, and their more efficient than renewables at scaling right now. Small modular reactors can even be dropped into existing coal plants and recycle their steam turbine hardware.
Frankly I don’t care if renewables are better in the long term, because there won’t be one if we don’t kill coal plants entirely very soon.
We’ll have to disagree. Renewables can be scaled faster and cheaper and have the added benefit of securing the grid through decentralization.
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Wind and solar > nuclear > fossil fuels
Nothing really against nuclear except how it is being weilded as a distraction from better, cleaner, energy. We need to be going all in on converting everything to wind and solar, with batteries and other power storage like water pumping facilities filling the gaps.
Nuclear needs a few more issues figured out, like how to actually cheaply build and get power from all those touted newer cleaner reactor styles.
To those of you who propose 100% renewables + storage. In cases with no access to hydro power. How much energy storage do you need? How does it scale with production/consumption? What about a system with 100TWh yearly production/consumption?
Interesting product. Reading about it quickly it seems to have a problem with self discharge. But perhaps they have ironed out that problem. There is no shortage of promising battery news, but there seems to be a problem getting them to mass production. Hoping this one is different.
EVs with VTG. Problem solved. More importantly, energy production (solar plus wind) and storage (batteries) are completely decentralized, which is a huge security improvement for the grid. It amazes me that a platform that is decentralized doesn’t beat the drum for the same for energy production and storage.
How do you generate energy during the winter? Are we going to run HVDC to the Sahara and connect them globally?
Finland has it figured out - see link below.
Yes: nuclear plant:
Over time, Olkiluoto-3 is expected to reduce the need for electricity imports from Russia, Sweden and Norway and lead to lower prices. Olkiluoto-3 will run alongside two existing reactors, eventually becoming Europe’s most powerful reactor.
Once regular energy production ramps up in July, the reactor will supply about 14% of Finland’s energy at 1,650 megawatts
Is there any more in-depth analysis to show how many EVs would be needed to make this feasible, how this would work with time of day use of power from commutes vs generation from solar power, how long the grid could stay powered this way, impact on consumers range, etc? I think the concept seems simple at first but would it actually be resiliant relying on just EV batteries? A cloudy week could see everyone run out of power, for example.
Yeah at higher latitudes the energy consumption is highest when renewable production is lowest.
Solar yes but not wind.
On coldest days in jan and feb the wind production here is nearly zero.
I’m glad your fellow countrymen have already got this figured out. Finland is a world leader in bioenergy. https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/finland-energy#:~:text=Renewable Energy,system based on fossil fuels.
Doesn’t energy made out biomass (like wood-fuels) release a lot of CO2 as it’s still a carbon source?
Also, in the same article, nuclear energy seems to be pretty high up too (if not higher) and they’re building a new reactor, showing that it’s not one or the other, but a combination that’s probably the best.
Geothermal would work, but it is very expensive unless you have a large property or a decent sized pond.
It would still require power from other sources, but would dramatically reduce demand.
Geothermal was trialed and deemed unprofitable. Nuclear power has been serving our baseload needs for 50 years.
A single Tesla powerwall has 13.5kwh of usable energy. An average Tesla car has between 70-100kwh of usable energy. The average American home uses about 30kwh/day (https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3). There are about 141 million houses in the US. There are 275 million personal and commercial vehicles in the US. So there would be plenty of capacity once you replace a significant chunk of those vehicles with EV.
Cloudy weeks don’t occur over large areas - if you look at solar or wind production over an entire county or state, for example, it varies very little (that’s also the advantage of using both sun and wind - when one is bad the other is typically good). So the solution to intermittency is mass adoption.
In regards to V2G. Tesla is not even supporting bi-directional charging at this point and it is just now starting to become a bit more common in newer models. It would be interesting to see more detailed example about this. You would also need to include the usage of industry and commercial which as far as I know together account for more than residential usage. How about availability in terms of SOC and being plugged in or not. I think this is a bit more difficult to solve than you are alluding to but I’m happy to be proved wrong.
This is a far easier problem and solution than building a nuclear reactor. And it’s utilizing something (EVs) that we need anyway so improved utilization of resources.
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Probably a good move by Tesla. I’ve been on team EV for a decade and hope V2G works out. But I’ve yet to see a convincing argument that it will work as the main storage method.
I live in a 1000 square foot two bedroom condo. When it gets below 20° f, which does a lot during the winter, I have to use the auxiliary heat on my heat pump unit.
That’s 7.5 kW.
So just to stay warm during the night, when solar stops working, I would need 3-5 Power Walls?
Get a better heat pump that doesn’t need aux heat? I know Mitsu “hyper heat” minisplits advertise high efficiency to -10F.
Powerwalls are overpriced for their capacity. Grid storage operators pay ~$150/kwh for batteries, then I’d guess about the same for charging/inverter electronics. I also see EV West sells 3.5kwh Samsung batteries to average consumers for $700 (I’m sure they’re charging a large markup as well).
Are you going to buy me a new heat pump?
Also why doesn’t anyone make a hyper efficient central system? I’ve only seen those hyper efficient units as mini splits.
Are you going to replace my 2016 Sonata I spent $13k on buying in 2018 with a $55k EV with car to grid for me?
What happens if it’s dark and cold for multiple days? I just can’t drive because my car emptied out running my minisplits?
Lol. Was just offering suggestions you may have not known about. Off-grid isn’t practical for many people who aren’t willing make sacrifices just for the sake of it. Some people like the challenge and lifestyle. Renewable power plants are more efficient than residential. I think used Leafs can be pretty cheap, and even new EVs, solar panels (grid-tied), and more efficient appliances can save you money in the long run. Not sure if it makes sense to sell EV charge back to the grid (I guess it does if the price is right).
I’ve heard of some people on certain electricity plans overheat or overcool their house when electricity is cheap to save money (acting kinda like storage for when electricity is more expensive).
Nice to meet you MrFagtron An EV would be a much better investment than powerwalls but it’s hard to be specific on a case by case basis. Hope that helps MrFagtron.
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Do you have a source for your fear that this is effective for the nuclear lobby? I am in the US, I’m so unaware of a nuclear lobby.
Your government to begin with. A centralized energy source nobody else can deploy is a big leverage on people and yet another tool to control them
I wonder what Greta’s take on nuclear is.
The same as the experts she regularly refers to.
So in favour of nuclear as long as we are in the process of switching to renewables.
Which means she opposes what Ia Anstoot is saying. Thunberg does not view nuclear as a renewable in and of itself, and thus, like Greenpeace, she opposes EU Commission’s decision to include nuclear power in its classification system for sustainable finance (link).
Greta is very scientifically minded and rational, unlike how the media likes to portray her. They use the emotional sound bites and almost never show her referring to paper after paper.
I hate it that sometimes women are portrayed like that just because they’re women.
Me to, but in this case, I think it’s because of politics.
Neurotic men projecting their bullshit into other people.
Even if media agencies are not setting out to portray someone like a caraciture they can not help it. That is just how the media is organized nowadays. If Greta shouts something angry in a microphone and they have 7 seconds for a segment about her, then they will use that outburst.
That’s great to hear. 😊
She’s probably going nuclear on Greenpeace.
